The nightmares about Fen lasted three weeks.
Always the same: Aira standing in the street, watching the Watch guard pull him from behind the crates. But in the dream, she didn't call the abort. She went back. Grabbed his hand. Ran.
And then the street would open beneath them like a mouth, and they'd fall into rushing water, and she'd watch him drown while his fingers slipped from hers.
She'd wake gasping, Kess's hand on her shoulder, his voice soft in the dark: "Just a dream. You're okay."
But she wasn't okay. She was efficient. Disciplined. Exactly what Cray needed her to be. And she hated every hollow, empty inch of herself.
Four weeks after Fen died, Aira was taking a shortcut through the southern tunnels when she heard it.
A sound so small she almost missed it beneath the constant drip of water and the distant echo of the city above.
A mewling cry. Weak. Desperate.
She should have kept walking. The Under-City was full of dying things. You couldn't save them all. Couldn't save most of them. She'd learned that lesson. Lived it. The coldness in her chest was proof.
But her feet stopped anyway.
The kitten was in a side tunnel she used as a shortcut back from reconnaissance work. Small, maybe eight weeks old, with matted gray fur and one eye swollen shut from infection. Its left hind leg bent at an angle that made her stomach turn.
Broken. Badly.
It made that sound again when it saw her. Not quite a meow. More like a wheeze with desperation behind it.
Aira crouched down, her reconnaissance forgotten. The kitten tried to drag itself toward her with its front paws, the broken leg trailing uselessly behind. Each movement left a smear of something dark on the stone. Blood, probably. Or worse.
She'd seen injuries like this before. The leg was too badly broken to heal on its own. The infection was already spreading, she could smell it, sour and wrong. Without intervention, it would die. Slowly. Painfully. Probably within a day.
Walk away, the cold voice in her head said. The voice that sounded like Cray. It's just an animal. The Under-City kills a hundred things like this every day. This isn't your problem.
But her hands were already reaching out, hovering over the matted fur.
She thought of Fen. Of his terrified eyes behind those crates. Of the choice she'd made to cut him loose. Of how Cray had called it the right choice, necessary, smart.
Of how she'd felt nothing when she learned he'd died.
Not this time, she thought. Not again.
The kitten wheezed, its one good eye fixing on her with something that looked almost like hope.
Aira picked it up carefully, cradling it against her chest. It was so light. All bones and matted fur and desperate, painful breathing.
"Okay," she whispered. "Okay. I'll try."
She set up in her corner of the hideout, away from the others. Nell was out with Torvan on a job. Kess was sleeping. Lyss was sharpening knives and ignoring everyone, as usual.
Cray watched her from across the fire, his ledger open on his lap, but he said nothing. Just watched with those calculating eyes that missed nothing.
Aira laid the kitten on a scrap of relatively clean cloth. It didn't fight. Didn't have the strength. Its breathing was rapid and shallow, each breath a visible effort.
She'd been studying healing glyphs for six months, longer than any other type of script. She'd successfully tattooed one on herself when she'd sliced her palm on broken glass. A basic accelerated-healing pattern on her right forearm. The cut had closed in two days instead of two weeks.
She could do this. She had to do this.
The healing glyph would need to go on the kitten's skin, near the injury. The hind leg. That meant shaving the fur first, cleaning the area, then inscribing the pattern with her needle and the precious ink from her personal vial.
Her hands shook as she worked.
She used a small blade to carefully shave a patch of fur from the kitten's haunch, near where the leg connected to the body. The kitten cried, a thin, pitiful sound that made her chest ache. She cleaned the area with water that was probably too cold, and the kitten cried harder.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm sorry, I'm trying to help."
By the time she had the needle ready, dipped in precious ink, her vision was blurring. She blinked hard, forcing focus.
The healing glyph was Western-style. She hadn't dared experiment with Eastern techniques or hybrids on something living. Three curved lines forming a triangle, with small circles at each vertex. Simple. She'd memorized the pattern, practiced it on paper and stone and her own skin a hundred times.
But paper didn't flinch. Stone didn't bleed. Her own skin had been numb with determination.
The kitten was none of those things.
The first line went in clean. The kitten's tiny body tensed, but it didn't move. Couldn't move. Too weak.
Aira's hand trembled as she started the second line. Focus, she told herself. Just focus. Like practicing. Just lines and curves.
The second line started well. But halfway through the curve, her hand trembled. The line went too shallow. Wrong. The angle was off.
No. She could fix it. She could compensate. She could—
The third line. She tried to adjust for the mistake in the second, bending it steeper to balance the pattern. But now the whole geometry was wrong. The vertex circles didn't line up properly with the converging lines. One was too high. Another too far left.
She finished anyway, her breathing ragged, sweat dripping down her temples despite the cavern's chill.
The glyph sat on the kitten's shaved skin, dark ink against pale flesh.
And it was wrong.
She could see it now, with the pattern complete. The asymmetry. The misaligned vertices. The curve that bent when it should have flowed straight. Every flaw magnified now that there was nothing left to fix.
"No," she whispered. "No no no, please—"
The kitten's breathing changed. Faster. More desperate.
The glyph didn't glow the way it should have, the way her successful arm-glyph had glowed faintly when it activated, like heat-shimmer over stone. This one just sat there. Dead ink on dying flesh.
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And then the kitten started convulsing.
Small spasms at first, then full-body seizures. Its mouth opened in a silent scream. The broken leg twisted even more grotesquely, and Aira heard something snap, bone or cartilage, she didn't know.
"Stop, stop, STOP—" Her hands hovered uselessly over the tiny body. She didn't know how to fix it. Didn't know how to stop what she'd started. The glyph was permanent. Tattooed into skin. There was no taking it back.
The seizures lasted maybe thirty seconds.
It felt like thirty years.
Then the kitten went still. Its one good eye stared at nothing. Its chest didn't rise.
Aira sat there, staring at the small corpse on the cloth, at the botched glyph on its skin that had killed instead of healed.
Her hands were covered in ink and blood and gray fur.
She'd tried to help.
She'd made it worse.
She'd killed it.
Just like the monk who'd tried to heal her mother.
The thought hit her like a physical blow. She was the monk. She was the incompetent, fumbling fool who'd botched the glyph and let someone die and called it fate or bad luck or anything except what it was: failure.
Her mother had died because the monk wasn't good enough.
The kitten had died because she wasn't good enough.
And she'd known that. Known she wasn't ready. Known the risk. But she'd tried anyway because she'd wanted to prove something to herself. Wanted to feel like she was still human, still capable of compassion, still someone who helped instead of abandoned.
And now the kitten was dead because of her ego.
"What happened?"
Cray's voice. He'd crossed the hideout without her noticing, was standing over her, looking down at the small corpse with clinical detachment.
"I tried—" Her voice cracked. "I tried to heal it. The glyph was wrong. I killed it."
Cray was silent for a long moment. Then he crouched beside her, his eyes on the botched pattern. He studied it the way he studied everything, carefully, analytically, looking for lessons to extract.
"The second line," he said quietly. "Too shallow. Threw off the whole geometry. The vertices don't align." He traced the pattern with one finger, not touching the skin. "Healing glyphs need precision. Even a small error and they don't just fail, they corrupt. Accelerate the damage instead of repairing it."
He looked at her, his expression unreadable.
"This is why the Church requires years of training before allowing anyone to work healing magic. One mistake and you don't just fail to heal, you kill faster than the injury would have."
"I know that now." The words tasted like ash and failure.
"You wasted ink," Cray said. Not cruel. Just factual. "Personal supply ink, on an animal that was going to die anyway. And learned a lesson you could have learned by watching others fail instead of failing yourself."
He stood, brushing dust from his knees.
"The Under-City is full of things that need saving. You can't save them all. Most of them, you'll just make it worse by trying." He looked down at her. "Compassion is expensive down here, Aira. And the price is usually paid in pieces you can't afford to lose."
He walked back to his spot by the fire, leaving her alone with the corpse and the weight of her failure.
Aira sat there for a long time, staring at the kitten's body.
Finally, she moved. Wrapped it carefully in the cloth, covering the botched glyph, covering the evidence of her incompetence. Carried it through the tunnels to a place where the water ran fast and deep.
She should have thrown it in. Let the current take it away. Let the Under-City swallow one more small death among thousands.
But she couldn't.
Instead, she found a crack between stones, wedged the wrapped body inside, and covered it with loose rocks. Not a grave, exactly. Just... a place.
She stood there for a moment, her hands still stained with ink and blood.
"I'm sorry," she whispered to the small cairn. "I'm sorry I wasn't good enough."
The water rushed past, indifferent. The stone didn't answer.
Aira walked back to the hideout, her chest hollow and cold.
She sat in the corner of the hideout, staring at her hands. The kitten's body was gone, disposed of in the canals. But she could still feel its weight in her palms. Still hear the sound it had made when the glyph failed.
Footsteps approached. She didn't look up.
"You okay?" Pek's voice, quieter than usual.
"Fine."
"Liar." He settled against the wall nearby, not crowding her but close enough to talk. "Something happened on that solo job. You've been different since you got back."
Aira said nothing. She couldn't tell him. Couldn't admit what she'd done.
"Was it the target? Did something go wrong with the theft?"
"I said I'm fine."
Pek studied her for a long moment, then nodded slowly. "Okay. But if you need to talk..." He started to stand.
"If you try to help someone," Aira whispered, the words escaping before she could stop them, "and you make it worse... is that better or worse than not trying at all?"
Pek settled back down. He didn't answer right away, just thought about it seriously.
"Did you try your best?" he finally asked.
"Yes."
"Then it's better. Failing while trying beats not trying at all." He paused. "Doesn't always feel better, though."
"No," Aira said, her voice barely audible. "It doesn't."
He was quiet for a moment. "For what it's worth? I've seen you work. You're careful. Precise. More careful than most of us, honestly." His voice was genuine. "Whatever went wrong, I doubt it was because you didn't try hard enough."
He was wrong. It was entirely her fault. The kitten had died because she'd been arrogant, because she'd pushed too hard, too fast, because she'd wanted to prove she was more than a zero.
But the lie felt kind anyway.
"Thanks," she said quietly.
Pek nodded and stood, heading back toward the fire. "Get some sleep, Aira. Tomorrow's another job."
She watched him go, surrounded by her guilt and the strange comfort of knowing someone had tried to understand.
Not crew. Not quite friends.
But something.
She thought of her mother's face. Of the black veins crawling from the botched healing glyph. Of the monk standing over her body, saying the ink's will is done.
She thought of Fen. Of his terrified face behind those crates. Of how she'd cut him loose to save the job. Of how Cray had called it the right choice.
She thought of the kitten. Of its one good eye looking at her with something like hope. Of how she'd killed that hope with her own hands.
Better to do nothing than to cause more harm.
The thought crystallized into certainty, cold and final.
She couldn't save anyone. Every time she tried, she made it worse. The kitten had died in agony because she'd thought she could help. Because she'd been arrogant enough to think good intentions mattered more than skill.
She would never do that again. Never put herself in a position where her incompetence could cause that kind of suffering. Never offer help she couldn't guarantee.
Better to be cold than to be the reason something died screaming. Better to do nothing than to make things worse. Better to be alone than to fail someone who trusted her.
Aira went to the canal and washed her hands until the ink and blood were gone, scrubbing until her skin was raw and red.
But the weight in her chest remained.
Three weeks later, a woman found her in the tunnels.
The woman was gaunt, her clothes little more than rags, her eyes hollow with desperation. She grabbed Aira's arm with skeletal fingers.
"Please," she gasped. "Please, I heard you know healing glyphs. My daughter, she's burning with fever. The Church won't help. They said we can't afford it. Please, I'll give you anything—"
Aira looked at the woman's face, gaunt, terrified, hoping, and saw her own mother in those features. Saw the desperation of someone who'd exhausted every option and was left with begging a child for help.
And she felt nothing.
"No," she said. Her voice was flat. Empty. "I'm not a healer. Find someone else."
"But they said you—"
"I said no." Aira pulled her arm free. "I can't help you."
The woman's face crumpled. "Please, she's only six years old, she's—"
"I. Can't. Help." Each word was a stone. Final. Absolute.
The woman stared at her for a long moment, hope dying in her eyes. Then she turned and stumbled away, her thin shoulders shaking with sobs.
Aira stood in the tunnel, watching her go.
She told herself she'd made the right choice. The smart choice. She wasn't skilled enough. She'd probably make the child worse. Better that the mother find a real healer, or that the fever run its course without her interference.
Better to do nothing than to kill another living thing with her incompetence.
She repeated it until she believed it.
Kess found her later, sitting alone in a side tunnel, staring at nothing.
"You could have tried," he said quietly. "The kid might have—"
"Or I might have killed her faster." Aira's hands were steady. No shaking. No doubt. "I'm not doing that again. Ever."
"The kitten was an accident. You were trying to help."
"And I killed it. Made it die in agony instead of just... letting it go peacefully." She looked at him, her eyes dry and hard. "I'm not risking that with a person. I'm not becoming the monk who killed my mother."
Kess was quiet for a long time. "That's not who you are, Aira."
"Maybe it is now."
"No. You're just scared. That's not the same thing."
"Fear or wisdom. What's the difference?" She stood up. "I have work to do. Cray wants me to scout the northern routes."
She walked away before Kess could respond.
Behind her, she heard him sigh, a sound of disappointment that she refused to let touch her.
She had scouting to do. Jobs to run. Skills to practice, skills that didn't involve other people's lives in her incompetent hands.
The kitten's face haunted her dreams that night. And the night after. And the night after that.
But she never offered to heal anyone again. And eventually, the dreams faded.
And she told herself that meant she was getting stronger.
[STATUS UPDATE]
Name: Aira
Age: 11
Level: 0
Rank: Silver II
Mental Canvas: 18 cm2
Scripts Memorized: 5 (3 tattooed)
Skills: Street Sense (Lv. 4), Light Fingers (Lv. 3)
[Humanity: 67 → 62]
[Glyphs Tattooed]
- Minor Healing (right forearm) - accelerates natural healing (ironic, given recent events)
- Night Vision (behind left ear) - enhances low-light vision
- Silence Step (left ankle) - muffles footsteps when active
[The kitten haunts you because you tried and failed. What about the girl you didn't try to save? Does she haunt you? Or have you learned not to care? That's not wisdom. That's cowardice. Be brave little spark.]